Archive for month: January, 2014

The last time I studied statistics was quite a few years ago, so I have much to refresh and more to learn for the first time on quantitative data analysis.

I have started reading a quick intro to that and the SPSS statistical analysis software package – “Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS: An introduction for the Health and Social Sciences”. It’s only 144 pages and takes a pragmatic approach to dealing with a simple questionnaire and how to analyse the data generated from it. I did start reading another longer text, but found it extremely dense and written with what seemed like a disdain for the non-stats person.

My thoughts are that I may need to do some preliminary research on current technology in the museum, use of social media, etc, and this may involve creating a questionnaire or two for either museum owners / directors or the “cultural tourists” who visit the museums.

Once field testing the platform I am developing, analysis of questionnaire data will probably be one of the methodologies used.

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I am also starting to look at more research on the cultural tourist and what Robert Stebbins calls “Serious Leisure”. I want to establish how this fits into my idea of the “competitive cultural tourist”, that is, one that takes pride in showing off their globe-trekking cultural tourism exploits.

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I also gave consideration to the mobile development platform and whether to go with a multi-platform platform like PhoneGap or to go native and stick to Android and Java for now. I think native is winning out, due to the need for support of barcodes and NFC – which can be supported in phonegap, but I suspect would lead to technical headaches. My research isn’t all about supporting every platform to be as commercial as possible; it is to prove that a mobile and social platform that I propose is viable and desirable.